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Highly unlikely? Tim cook literally said in the quote "You can never say never."

Have you ever worked at a high profile company that laid off people? I have. Everything is good and the narrative is "We aren't like other companies" until it actually happens.

Its suboptimal to explicitly telegraph layoffs from an employee morale perspective. As leadership, its better to ask for forgiveness after the layoff than to ask for permission to lay off.

They may actually get through this without laying off, but its certainly not guaranteed just because the CEO says "no layoffs."

> They may actually get through this without laying off, but its certainly not guaranteed just because the CEO says "no layoffs."

It's not just because of what the CEO said. The CEO's words are justified by the company's actions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34742642

This just means the letter will include the wording "last resort" and "we tried everything to avoid this"

This ignores the headline of the article, which is "it didn't overhire". Thus, not only is Cook downplaying the possibility of layoffs, but Apple clearly doesn't need to do them.